Aether Racing
How to Race *After you get the quest, you must dismount before running over the pad. Once you do, you will be on a temporary hoverpad for the duration of the race. *A timer will count down (sounds like a clock) and a bell will ring when you can start. "Driving" the hoverpad is the same as using a flying mount. *You'll need to turn, twist, and fly up and down to pass through each ring after they turn green (a glowing light effect). *You must pass through the rings in order. As you pass through one a sound will indicate a successful pass-through and it will lose its color and the next one should turn green. Note that lag can make this tricky and sometimes the next ring updates and turns green slower than you fly. *If you miss a ring, slow down or stop and look around for the glowing ring. It may hurt your time, but you can still complete the course. After a few runs, the order (pattern) will be easier to discern and you will no longer miss rings and improve your time. How to beat the time *To get the best times for the titles and to be ranked in the high-score lists you need to study the courses, use the good clouds, avoid the storm clouds and clip the rings. *You can check your time after the race by clicking on the big gizmo next to the quest giver. *In addition to the rings, you can elect to use special features on the course to speed your progress or--if you're reckless instead---slow you down. Each of these looks a either like a storm cloud or wiggling spots. They effect your speed in the following ways: **'Storm Clouds' - hazardous storm clouds with lightning and similar looking Bee Swarms slow you down considerably. **'Speed Boosts' - blue and green spots are speed boosts that make you go faster if you pass through them. The blue spots will disappear once you go through them, which removes them for any competitors in the race. The green spots do not vanish. **'Immunity Spots' - On a some tracks (Lavastorm and Butcherblock) there are also golden spots that make you immune to the slowing effects of storm clouds for a short while. *All clouds can override each other; for example, if you go through a storm cloud and immediately pass through a green spot it behaves as if you never encountered the storm cloud. This is true for all of these, so pay attention as you travel so you don't cancel out positive speed boosts! Race Introduction and Fan Faire *'Aether Racing' was introduced as three World Event quests in game to celebrate the discovery of Velious. These original races took place in Butcherblock Mountains, Lavastorm, and Tenebrous Tangle. *At Fan Faire 2011 the Great Divide location was added as a new race track for a Live quest. *All of the above were later combined to form the various tracks that appear during Tinkerfest. Tinkerfest Races During the Tinkerfest live event in mid-July each year, the three original courses plus the course added at Fan Faire in 2011 are available at the same time. Location-specific titles are awarded for the fast times as listed in the table below. The times vary because the size and difficulty of each track varies by their locations. City Festival Races Starting in April 2011, new tracks were introduced in the location appropriate to each month's City Festival. *The order of the city festivals has changed over the years, but each one runs from the 1st of each month at 12:01 PST through the 8th at 11:59 PST. The festivals alternate between "evil" and "good" aligned cities and happen twice per year as of 2019. *Titles are awarded for the fast times as listed in the table below. The times vary because the size and difficulty of each track varies by their locations. To assure you are traveling to the correct location, consult the in-game Calendar to see which festival is occurring. Race Rewards Race rewards have changed somewhat over time, however, as of 2019 they generally reward the following: *If they are up for a regular event (not spawned), the event-appropriate currency; either City Tokens or five Shiny Tinkerfest Cogs *Title: Test Pilot for completion of one race track *Title: Crash Test Dummy Extraordinaire for ten races. *The Achievement Furiously Fast is awarded for completing the Tinkerfest races in all four locations during the event. *For 1-4 races, an Unstable version of the mount that looks like a tinkered hover pad. It blows up on dismount and zoning (e.g. Unstable Blue C.R.A.S.H. Pad). This is a temporary mount that appears in your inventory and that vanishes after a time (possibly 24 hours?). Of interest to anyone with low-level characters: this mount bypasses the typical level restrictions for flying mounts, but you can only also have only one of each color at a given time. *Race number 5 rewards a choice of a stable version of the mount that looks identical to the temporary mounts. The stable version will appear in the Mount tab of the Character Sheet and will only hover at the ground level unless you have the appropriate level for flight. You have a choice of one of the following C.R.A.S.H. Pads (you cannot gain more than 1 Pad per track): **Blue C.R.A.S.H. Pad **Dark C.R.A.S.H. Pad **Gray C.R.A.S.H. Pad **Green C.R.A.S.H. Pad **Red C.R.A.S.H. Pad Spawned Event Aether Racing A less common type of race can appear if the server has a visit from a (Player) Guide, someone from the official, Daybreak-employed Customer Service staff or Community Relations staff. If such an event occurs it will appear as follows: *Aether Racing: Thundering Steppes starts in Thundering Steppes on the beach at the Dead River Docks. Special rewards Depending on who spawned the event there are 3 different possible rewards that can be gained from successfully completing the track: *Green C.R.A.S.H. Disk (Guides) *Purple C.R.A.S.H. Disk (Customer Service Staff) *Gold C.R.A.S.H. Disk (Community Relations staff) The Disks are not like the tinkered-style pads. Instead they are similar in form and function to the Veteran's Elemental Mounts (without particle effects). History When the city-fest versions of the races were introduced, the following notes were offered by Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson, Director of Development for the Everquest Franchise from 2009 to 2015: :So...it turns out that the gnomes are horribly, terribly jealous of the "meat solution" to flying mounts found in Velious and they're working furiously to come up with a tinkering substitution instead. Thus, the debut of "Aether Racing", Tuesday, March 1st 2011! :The tinkerers have cobbled together a rattling, wheezing deathtrap of a flying machine, and they want YOU to test it for them! (They're not stupid enough to test it themselves.) So they've disguised their guinea pig flying program as a set of air racing courses that they've sprinkled throughout Norrath. You can go to either Lavastorm, Butcherblock, or Tenebrous Tangle to join in on the racing action and prizes *are* awarded for good times as incentive for pushing their rattletraps as hard as they'll go. :Race course signup NPCs are close enough to globe or wizard spire zone-in positions that *any* level of character can participate in these races, despite the courses being set in zones that are normally too difficult for some folks. :Come check it out!